THE NEW YOR.KER. even prevail in, a nu- clear war, and who are now in the ascendancy in Washington. But their efforts inevitably founder in the boundless destruction of the more than a million Hiro- shimas that are waiting to happen in the world's fifty thousand-odd nu- clear weapons. What these strategists can never explain is how anyone can "prevail" in a "war" after which no one would be left. Their "victories," or restora- tions of the peace "on terms favorable to the United States," are ap- parently of an extra- human sort-"victo- ries" in which, after all the people have been killed, our bombs triumph over the other side's bombs. And the strategists' sometimes intricate and ingenious scenarios of nuclear-war-fighting are testimony only to the ability of the human mind, transported by pure ab- stract theory, to take leave of reality altogether. In short, under deterrence the pas- sage to a world in which the use of force is given up as the means of set- tling international differences has al- ready begun. In a way, it has been accomplished. In the first days of the nuclear age, it seemed to some "ideal- ists" that the task facing mankind was to abolish war, but "realists" replied that this was impossible-at least, in the short run-because it required the establishment of world government; instead, they proposed the policy of deterrence. However, when one looks at deterrence closely it turns out that war has not been preserved by it. Isn't this what the political scientist Ber- nard Brodie was getting at when he said, in 1946, in "The Absolute Weapon," that in the nuclear world the only purpose of military prepara- tions was to avert wars, not to win them? And isn't this what countless statesmen of our time have been telling us in saying that the purpose of their nuclear policies is only to prevent the use of nuclear and other weapons? The statement "War has been spoiled," which stands in such sharp contrast to Mandelbaum's "War is still possible," thus refers not to an idealistic aspira- tion but to a fait accompli. We cannot abolish war, because nuclear weapons "\. J)j ; i I 1 ^'. "h. <Ii> \. ::. > L '., .. 51 <. ." . '" , "1. " {\ L - -( ..: ::.::. .-;:.... ...: ? '\. ...... / ;.. .:i:;. 'It (. .::!: ... %" :: ::\ ;-: \,. :::. ,. "t i( , v " ..h . .$ < . ,t. J ".0'" ';'$:;:W * .<::: ... '!.. "/ ,. / . . ... .: .. G. ' ".- \.. ;;7 ....:: , . ." .:: ';,.. ..' .\:::: . . .. \.b, . *' . ::. Iii! I ,:",-r'. ,.4.. '. t i V . :. ::} .'. 4..::::. .:::: . .' ) ' (,," ..: ...< .: .<. * . ; :, J <'y r WHEREVER I 'f t WHOEVER I . have already done the job for us. What we can and must abolish is mutual as- sured destruction and the possibility of human extinction, the threat of which we now trade on to keep the peace. Our ambivalence toward this threat, which we try simultaneously to re- nounce and to exploit for our political ends, defines our new predicament. Just by thinking a little harder, and by looking a little bit more closely at both theory and practice in our nuclear world, we seemingly have already accomplished this "impossible" thing of abolishing war (among nuclear powers, anyway). This is not a mere phrase but a bedrock reality of our time, on which we may rely as we seek elements with which to build the edifice of our future safety. All the debates, carried over from the pre- nuclear age, about whether or not war is moral, and whether or not world government might be preferable, are no doubt extremely interesting, but they are anachronistic, for the world to which they have reference has gone out of existence. Nuclear weapons, we see, have knocked the sword of war from our hands. Now it is up to us to decide what we will pick up in its place. The question before us shifts from how to abolish war to how to get along in a world from which war has been abol- ished. And we can start by seeing the first alternative that we have hit on- deterrence-in a new light: not as a continuation of international "anar- chy," in which "war is still possible," but as one possible system for getting I WHATEVER I /);'Pl :'er . along in a world without waf. With- out quite recognizing it, we have taken the first steps toward global agree- ment. It is true that force, while it is no longer the final arbiter, or any sort of arbiter, still plays the central role, as it did in the pre-nuclear state of nature, for a by-product of force, ter- ror, is what holds everybody immobile. Yet it is also true that, as in the civil state, each individual's force, in a kind of tacit agreement, is supposed never to be used. And, as in the civil state, the whole system depends on the rec- ognition by each individual actor of a common interest-survival-that must take precedence over individual interests. Since everybody knows and acknowledges that the use of force by any party may push everybody toward a common doom, all make efforts to- gether to insure that the "first use" never occurs-although at the same time each side, paradoxically, must constantly bristle with resolve to use force to repel any aggression, should it somehow occur. Moreover, right at the heart of deterrence there is an element of coöperation and consent-a crucial ingredient of every civil state, no matter how oppressive. This is the "psychological" element in deterrence, on which all else depends. For while it is true that sheer terror is the operative force in deterrence it is also true that the statesman on whom it operates must give his consent if it is to work. To be sure, his freedom of action is no greater than that of someone who is being told to do something at gun- point; nevertheless, he remains a free